Looks like you are good to go. Come back in November and tell us how you like riding with the gear.

+1, It's counter intuitive since most people think in terms of protecting themselves by using their hands, but the "safest" way to crash is to ride the bike all the way to the ground. The exception to that is an over the bars crash, but the forces of nature will be in charge there.

Otherwise, most spills are to the side and if you "ride" the bike to the ground, you'll take the brunt of the impact on your shoulder, and to a lesser extent on your ribs, hip, and thighs. If you have normal bone strength and muscular padding, odds are you'll walk away and be complaining about road rash for a few days.

Maybe we should develop some "clipless grips" and gloves. Then not only would we not be able to get our feet loose from the pedals, but also unable to let go of the bars and have no choice but "ride it to the ground".

Totally subscribe to the posts on knowing how to fall. My years on the judo mat have benefited me in most every way. A previous poster talked about the Thousand Repetition Rule. It is true.

But, the fall that changed my life was slipping on the ice. Survived lots of big and little falls. But that one that broke the figurative camel's back. Impact was flat on back at shoulder level.

So, learn how to fall, practice often. Be strong and rested so your body can react, and heal if needed. But, accept that you will fall and come to grips with it.

Tried to edit "that one that" to "that one".

Couldn't.

Helmet, gloves, and polycarbonate sunglasses.

I've had some serious cycling-related injuries, and there's no product commercially available that could mitigate them. Even if there were, it's doubtful that I'd wear it, as it most likely would be too hot and constricting. So add to the above list "an appreciation of my own mortality."

Maybe.

However, I think that developing instincts might be better.

I sometimes wonder if there's a difference in how people crash depending on when they started riding. Those who started young while they were still immortal, and tended to fool around a lot got plenty of opportunities to learn how to crash, and like bike riding, once you learn, you never forget.

OTOH - those who started as adults, especially after middle age probably don't get as much practice, and tend to get hurt more seriously.

This is derived from Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule, which Gladwell himself says has been distorted and misrepresented.

In a 2014 interview Gladwell was quoted as saying:
In a recent interview Gladwell said one of his main points was that such dedication to achieving excellence is all-consuming, requiring a support base to free that person from all distractions in pursuit of a single goal. That pursuit of accomplishment comes at the expense of family, friends, coworkers and a community who take on larger burdens to free up the individual to achieve personal goals.

This is an unpopular corollary to the 10,000 hour rule because it contradicts the concept of individual accomplishment, the one man army, pull yourself up by your bootstrappers, the rugged individual carving out a niche at no expense to others,

And, again, mere repetition does not accomplish excellence, clarity or even any improvement whatsoever. If anything improper repetition reinforces errors and leads to physical injuries or mental blocks that are extraordinarily difficult to repair.

The body is less adaptable with age. There are greater risks of brain injury even from impacts that don't directly impact the head.

Add to that the psychological barriers involving painful impacts to the body. It changes even very experienced martial artists. Some boxers experience impaired cognitive abilities and slowed reflexes. Others become gun shy, mentally scarred by knockout losses or painful, grueling fights. Rather than learning from those experiences and developing better defenses, they instinctively and reflexively do exactly the wrong things that make them more vulnerable to repeated knockouts or injuries. Other athletes involved in non-contact sports and activities never recover mentally from crashes or serious injuries from accidents, collisions, etc.

So I'm skeptical of the notion of 50+ casual cyclists and amateur athletes learning to "roll with a fall" or any other method that demands physical mastery involving a complex stew of reflexes, coordination, strength, flexibility and an instinctive mindset.

I suspect that we often give ourselves credit for happenstances, falling the right way accidentally despite ourselves, and selectively forgetting the times we screwed up. If we crash and emerge unscathed, we congratulate ourselves on our youthful reflexes and instincts. If we're injured, we chalk it up to unavoidable circumstances. That's what enables us to pursue potentially risky activities in the first place.

I wear a helmet, gloves, and glasses - sunglasses for day, clear for night. I also wear a BRIGHT orange t-shirt if I am riding on the road at all. I had a friend meet me at a park one time and he said he could see me for about a half mile with that shirt on

I should mention that I also run front and rear lights on the road. I consider them to be essential safety gear.

I add shin pads to the mix if I am riding in the bush. My shins look like Swiss cheese from years of branches and stones while off-road riding.

Falls happen fast enough such that conscious thought will have no bearing and only instinct will prevail. You do develop instinct, however, through LOTS of 'fall' practice - unfortunately at our ages, that practice/instinct has already been deeply ingrained (or not) through the sports we participated in during our invincible/pliable youth. At 50+ we are not going to develop better fall instincts, rather, just hope the remaining instinct loss is slow.

If you grew up with judo, then perhaps you can instinctively tumble safely without using hands/arms, but I know my own instinct is to absolutely first use my hands/feet/limbs to break a fall before my head/torso touch the ground. Limbs have greatest range of travel and therefore are the body's best nature shock absorbers with which to decelerate an impact to head/torso, assuming your practice/instinct is not to stiff arm/leg it. Also hands/feet/limbs are completely expendable, while things in the head/torso are less so.

My own background is downhill skiing from 4 yo. - can't imagine better practice for falling at speed on a relatively soft surface. This led to numerous life-long speed sports like skateboarding, rollerblading, ice hockey, and street/dirt motorcycling, not to mention being a gymnast. I've fallen countless times on all sorts of surfaces, at all sorts of speeds, and from all sorts of heights, and plenty without protective gear or helmets. I've lost a lot of skin to road rash, but knock-on-wood, have never broken a bone or had a concussion.

The instinct to break falls with my hands is so strong that I first reach for gloves, for lower speed sports (eg, hockey, rollerblading, skateboarding), and then only add helmets as speeds increases (bicycling, motorcycling).

There's no right or wrong way to fall - you will just do what you are used to through instinct. If you are not used to falling.... then take less risk, or add more protective gear.

Like several have said, it happened so fast I didn't have time to react. I do know I was still gripping, tightly, both grips. Obviously my left shoulder and left knee took the impact, my right hand injury was (assuming) due to the bar pushing my thumb back beyond its natural range as the right handlebar rotated backwards as the left pushed forwards due to impact.

Tomorrow I have a shoulder MRI to see the extent of damage to my left rotator cuff. I can move my left arm in all directions/ways, just hurts when raised over shoulder level - I think I will avoid surgery on that one.

I do not believe that Gladwell's book based on Anders Ericsson's work has much to do with developing instinctual behavior. It has more to do with how many hours it takes to become really good at something, in a broad sense, given the time and natural talent.

I believe this simplified explanation for developing muscle memory or "unconscious competence" is what I was talking about.

"Muscle memory has been used synonymously with motor learning, which is a form of procedural memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition. When a movement is repeated over time, a long-term muscle memory is created for that task, eventually allowing it to be performed without conscious effort. This process decreases the need for attention and creates maximum efficiency within the motor and memory systems. Examples of muscle memory are found in many everyday activities that become automatic and improve with practice, such as riding a bicycle, typing on a keyboard, typing in a PIN, playing a musical instrument,[1] martial arts or even dancing".